The Boys of '98 Part 47

The largest island in the archipelago is Luzon, with an area of 40,885 square miles, and on which is situated the city of Manila.

The population of Manila, as given in the consular reports for 1880, is in the walled town 12,000, and in the suburbs from 250,000 to 300,000.

The city was founded in 1571, and is situated on the eastern sh.o.r.e of a circular bay 120 nautical miles in circ.u.mference. It looks like a fragment of Spain transplanted to the archipelago of Asia. On its churches and convents, even on its ruined walls, overturned in the earthquake of 1863, time has laid the brown, sombre, dull gold colouring of the mother country. The ancient city, silent and melancholy, stretches interminably along its gloomy streets, bordered with convents whose flat facades are only broken here and there by a few narrow windows. But there is also a new city within the ramparts of Manila; it is sometimes called the Escolta, from the name of its central quarter, and this city is alive with its das.h.i.+ng teams, its noisy crowd of Tagala women, shod in high-heeled shoes, and every nerve in their bodies quivering with excitement. They are almost all employed in the innumerable cigar factories whose output inundates all Asia.

Here all sorts of nationalities elbow one another,-Europeans, Chinese, Malays, Tagalas, Negritos, in all some 260,000 people of every known race and of every known colour. In the afternoon, in the plain of Lunetto, carriages and equipages of every kind drive past, and pedestrians swarm in crowds around the military band stand in the marvellously picturesque square, lit up by the slanting rays of the setting sun, which purples the lofty peaks of the Sierra de Marivels in the distance, unfolds its long, luminous train on the ocean, and tinges with a dark reddish shade the sombre verdure of the city's sloping banks. This is the hour when all the inhabitants hold high festival, able at length to breathe freely after the heat of the noontide.

The primary cause of the Philippine rebellion was excessive taxation by Spain to raise money to carry on the war in Cuba. The islands were already overburdened with a.s.sessments to enrich Spanish coffers and to support the native poor. The additional money required for Cuba was the last straw.

Extreme cruelties began when General Aguirre arrived from Spain with reinforcements. He did not undertake to penetrate the mountains, but ma.s.sacred the native population in the towns. When he took Santa Clara del Laguna he spared neither man, woman, nor child. The people in the mountains heard of this. They were almost wild with fury, but they were helpless.

It is stated, on what seems to be good authority, that ten thousand dead prisoners had been taken from prison in a year.

Three years ago it cost the government a little more than half a cent to collect every dollar of taxation. In Luzon, it now costs ninety-five cents. The only taxes that can be profitably collected are those in Manila. The rich islands of Leyte and Mindanao contribute practically nothing.

The first islands to revolt were Luzon, Mindanao, and Leyte. About one year and a half ago, agents of the insurrectionists appealed to the government at Was.h.i.+ngton to interfere in their behalf. The pet.i.tion was received and filed.

In the hot season, during the greater part of the day, the heat is so intense that Europeans frequently fall with heat apoplexy. Even the Spaniards do their business in the early hours, whiling away the heat of the day in sleep. Late in the afternoon Manila begins to awaken.

The Escolta, or princ.i.p.al street, is crowded with loungers of all ranks and colours, each with a segarito stuck pen-like behind his ear.

Caromattas, a species of two-wheeled hooded cabriolets peculiar to the natives, crowd the roadway, together with the buggies and open carriages of the foreign element.

At sunset the various tobacco stores close, and their thousand of employees turn out into the streets. They form a motley yet effective feature among the wayfarers. The Malay girls are usually very pretty, with languis.h.i.+ng eyes, shaded by long lashes, and supple figures, whose graceful lines are revealed by their thin clothing. In fine weather their bare feet are thrust into light, gold-embroidered slippers. In wet weather they raise themselves on high clogs, which necessitates a very becoming swinging of the hips.

There is not a bonnet to be seen. Women of the better cla.s.ses affect lace and flowers, those of the lower wear their own hair flowing down their backs, in a long, blue-black wave. Jewelry is profusely worn. Every woman sparkles with bracelets, earrings, and chains. Many of the males are similarly attired. Everybody smokes. Cigarettes at fifteen for a cent are in chief favour with the natives. Cigars at $1.50 a hundred are in favour with the foreigners. The handful of Englishmen resident in Manila are mostly bachelors, eager to make their pile and return to pleasanter surroundings. These take up their quarters in a large house at Sampalog, which is club and boarding-house combined, or in "chummeries," established in adjacent buildings.

The Spaniards cla.s.sify all the Philippine islanders under three religious groups,-the infidels, who have held to their ancient heathen rights, the Moors, who retain the Mahometan religion of their first conquerors, and the infinitely larger cla.s.s of Catholics.

An important, though numerically small, element in the population of the larger cities are the mestizos, or half-breeds, the result of admixture either between the Chinese or the Spanish and the natives. These mestizos occupy about the same social position as the mulattos of the United States. But they are the richest and most enterprising among the native population.

The most important personage is the cura, or parish priest. He is in most instances a Spaniard by birth, and enrolled in one or other of the three great religious orders, Augustinian, Franciscan, or Dominican, established by the conquerors. At heart, however, he is usually as much, if not more, of a native than the natives themselves. He is bound for life to the land of his adoption. He has no social or domestic tie, no antic.i.p.ated home return, to bind him to any other place.

Next to the church, the greatest Sunday and holiday resort in a Philippine village is the c.o.c.k-pit, usually a large building wattled like a coa.r.s.e basket and surrounded by a high paling of the same description, which forms a sort of courtyard, where c.o.c.ks are kept waiting their turn to come upon the stage, when their owners have succeeded in arranging a satisfactory match. It is claimed that many a respectable Malay father has been seen escaping from amid the ruins of his burning home bearing away in his arms his favourite bird, while wife and children were left to s.h.i.+ft for themselves.

The diet of the Philippines has something to do, undoubtedly, with their gentle and non-aggressive qualities. They eschew opium and spirituous liquors. Their chief sustenance, morning, noon, and eve, is rice. The rice crop seldom fails, not merely to support the population, but to leave a large margin for export. Famine, that hideous shadow which broods over so many a rice-subsisting population, is unknown here. Even scarcity is of rare occurrence. In the worst of years hardly a sack of grain has to be imported. It is this very abundance which stands in the way of what the world calls progress. The Malay, like other children of the tropics, limits his labour by the measure of his requirements, and that measure is narrow indeed. Hence it is often difficult to obtain his services in the development of the tobacco, coffee, hemp, and sugar industries, which might make the archipelago one of the wealthiest and most prosperous portions of the earth's face.

Manila has been once before captured from Spain. The English were its captors, although they held it only a few months. It was in 1762, a few weeks after the English capture of Havana. Spain had been rash enough to side with France in the war usually known in this country as the French and Indian war. She was speedily punished for it.

The expedition against Manila was the plan of Colonel William Draper; he was made a brigadier-general for the expedition and put in command, with Admiral Cornish as his naval ally. There were nine s.h.i.+ps of the line and frigates, several troop-s.h.i.+ps, and a land force of twenty-three hundred including one English regiment, with Sepoys and marines.

On September 24, 1762, these forces were disembarked just south of Manila.

The Archbishop of Manila, who was also governor-general of the island, collected and armed some ten thousand natives, as a reinforcement to the Spanish garrison of eight hundred. During the progress of the siege some daring attempts were made by the British to prevent the further construction of defences, but the a.s.sailants were repulsed with great slaughter.

A desperate sally was made by a strong body of natives, who "ran furiously on the ranks of the besiegers and fought with almost incredible ferocity, and many of them died, like wild beasts, gnawing with their teeth the bayonets by which they were transfixed."

On October 6th a breach was effected in the Spanish works, the English carried the city by storm, and gave it up for several hours to the ravages of a merciless soldiery. The Archbishop and his officers had retired to the citadel, but this could not be defended, and a capitulation was agreed upon, by which the city and port of Manila, with several s.h.i.+ps and the military stores, were surrendered, while for their private property the Spanish agreed to pay as a ransom $2,000,000 in coin, and the same in bills on the treasury at Madrid. This last obligation was never paid.

APPENDIX B.

WAR-s.h.i.+PS AND SIGNALS.

There are ten princ.i.p.al cla.s.ses of vessels in the United States navy, distinguished one from another by the differences in their uses and by their strength and speed. The general principle underlying their construction is that a vessel which is not strong enough to fight one of her own size must be fast enough to run away. Any vessel which is inferior in armament, and has no compensating superiority in speed, is outcla.s.sed.

The same is true of any vessel which is equal in armament, but inferior in speed to an adversary.

The size of a vessel is measured by its displacement. This displacement is the number of tons of water she will push aside to make room for herself.

A vessel of ten thousand tons will take engines of a certain weight and power to drive her at a given speed, and the larger the engine the larger the boilers and the greater the supply of coal required. Now, if it is necessary to give this vessel heavy protective armour and big guns, the additional weight of this equipment must be saved somewhere else, and usually in the engine-room, reducing the speed of the vessel. Following out this principle, it will be found that the fastest s.h.i.+ps carry the lightest armament, and that those which carry the biggest guns in their batteries and the thickest armour on their sides are comparatively slow, the extreme variation among vessels of the same displacement being about eight or nine miles an hour.

In the matter of attack and defence, vessels are distinguished by the number and weight of the guns they carry, and by the distribution and thickness of their armour. Protective armour is of two kinds, that which surrounds the guns, so as to protect them from the enemy's fire, and that which protects the motive-power of the s.h.i.+p, so as to prevent the engines from being rendered useless.

The maximum of guns and armour and the minimum of speed are to be found in the first-cla.s.s battle-s.h.i.+p, which is simply a floating fortress, so constructed that she need never run away, but can stand up and fight as long as her gun turrets revolve. The general plan of construction in a battle-s.h.i.+p is to surround the engines, boilers, and magazines with a wall of Harveyized steel armour eighteen inches or so thick, and seven or eight feet high, which extends about four feet below the water-line and three feet above it. This armour belt is not only on the sides of the s.h.i.+p, but is carried across it fore and aft, immediately in front of and behind the s.p.a.ce occupied by the engines and magazines, and the whole affair is covered with a solid steel roof three or four inches thick. Outside this central fortress, and extending from it clear to the bow and stern at each end, is a protective deck of steel, three inches thick, which is placed several feet below the water-line. Everything above this deck and outside this fortress might be shot away, and the vessel would still float and fight.

On the roof of the fortress are placed the turrets containing the big guns. The largest of these guns, 13-inch calibre, weigh about sixty tons each, and will carry a sh.e.l.l weighing eleven hundred pounds about twelve miles. The turrets are circular, as a rule, large enough to hold two guns, and are made of face-hardened steel from fifteen to eighteen inches thick.

They revolve within a barbette or ring of steel eighteen inches thick, which protects the machinery by which the guns are trained. Farther back on the roof of the fortress are other and lighter turrets made of 8-inch steel and carrying 8-inch guns, and at other places are stationed rapid-fire guns of lighter calibre, protected by thinner armour than that of the main belt.

If all this secondary battery is stripped off, leaving nothing but the turrets with the big guns, and these are brought down close to the water, and the armour belt is reduced to seven or eight inches in thickness, the type of vessel known as the monitor is reached. It is simply a battle-s.h.i.+p on a reduced scale. Such vessels are very slow and cannot stand rough weather, on account of their low freeboard. The speed of the monitors is seldom more than twelve or fourteen miles an hour, and they are intended to act in coast defence, usually in connection with sh.o.r.e-batteries. The best types in the navy are the _Terror_ and the _Puritan_.

The speed of a battle-s.h.i.+p is about eighteen miles an hour. The best specimen in the navy is the _Indiana_, declared by its admirers to be the most powerful battle-s.h.i.+p afloat. Second-cla.s.s battle-s.h.i.+ps, like the _Texas_, are smaller vessels, usually about seven thousand tons, and they have a much lighter armour belt, about twelve inches, and do not carry so heavy an armament as s.h.i.+ps of the first cla.s.s. The _Maine_ was a second-cla.s.s battle-s.h.i.+p. Her largest guns were of 10-inch calibre; her armour was twelve inches thick, and her turrets were eight inches thick only.

The first step in reducing the armament from that of the battle-s.h.i.+p proper, at the same time increasing the speed, produces the armoured cruiser. This type of vessel may carry no guns of more than 8-inch calibre, and the armour belt is reduced to three or four inches in thickness. Instead of the roof over the armour belt, the protective deck is carried all over the s.h.i.+p, but it is not flat, nor is it of equal thickness, as in a battle-s.h.i.+p. On the top and in the middle it is three inches thick, but the sides are six inches and they slope abruptly to below the water-line. Between these sloping sides and the thin armour belt coal is stored, so that a sh.e.l.l would have to penetrate the outer belt, six or eight feet of coal, and a sloping belt of steel six inches thick, the total resistance of which is calculated to be equal to a solid horizontal armour plate fifteen inches thick.

A cruiser is not supposed to fight with a battle-s.h.i.+p, because it could not accomplish anything with its 8-inch guns against the 18-inch armour of its heavier rival, while one well-directed shot from the 12-inch guns of a battle-s.h.i.+p or monitor would probably sink any armoured cruiser afloat.

For this reason the cruiser must be faster than the battle-s.h.i.+p, so that she can run away, and the weight that is saved in the armour belt and big guns is therefore put into the engine-room. The average speed of an armoured cruiser is about twenty-four miles an hour, and the best types of this cla.s.s in the navy are probably the _Brooklyn_ and _New York_.

Some vessels, like the Spaniard _Vizcaya_, are about half way between a battle-s.h.i.+p and a cruiser, having the heavy guns of the former and the speed of the latter. The _Vizcaya_, although a cruiser, carried 11-inch guns with a 12-inch armour belt, and had a speed of twenty-three miles an hour.

The next step in reducing armament and increasing speed, produced the protected cruiser, which carries no armour belt, but retains the protective deck, upon the sloping sides of which is stored the coal. The turrets disappear altogether, and there is usually only one 8-inch gun, the battery being princ.i.p.ally made up of 4-inch rapid-fire guns and 6, 4, and 1-pounders. As this cla.s.s of vessel is not able to cope with the armoured cruiser, it must be faster, for the general principle holds good that the weaker the vessel becomes in point of offensive weapons or defensive armour, the greater the necessity that she should be able to run away. The best types of the protected cruiser in the navy may be found in the _Columbia_ and _Minneapolis_, which have a speed of about twenty-seven miles an hour.

The weakest cla.s.s of all is composed of the unprotected cruisers, which have neither armour-belt nor protective deck, and carry only light batteries of rapid-fire guns. When these vessels are slow, like the _Detroit_, they are intended for long voyages and for duty in foreign countries, and are of little use in a sea fight. The very fast unprotected cruiser, like the American line steamers, _St. Paul_ and _St. Louis_, attach little importance to their armament, and rely for protection upon stowing the coal behind the place occupied by the armour belt in other vessels. All the beautiful wood-work, which was so much admired in these vessels, was ripped out to make room for these coal-bunkers, which are sufficient to protect them from anything but the heaviest guns. On account of their extreme weakness as fighters, these cruisers are necessarily the fastest of all the large vessels, and can run away from anything. For this reason no concern was felt for the _Paris_ by those who knew the principles which govern the safety of modern vessels.

The various types of cruisers are not expected to fight with any but vessels of their own cla.s.s, which they may encounter in the discharge of similar duties, such as scouring the seas as the advance guard of the slower line of battle-s.h.i.+ps, preying upon or escorting merchant vessels, blockading ports, and acting as convoys for troop-s.h.i.+ps. Gunboats are simply light-draught cruisers, and are intended for use in shallow waters and rivers.

Torpedo-boats, as their name implies, depend entirely upon the torpedo as the weapon of attack, and they carry no guns except a very few light-calibre rapid-fires to keep off small boats. Their success depends on their ability to approach a vessel very rapidly, launch their torpedo, and retreat before they are detected and sunk. Speed is their great requisite, and a torpedo-boat like the _Porter_ can speed thirty-two miles an hour. Naval experts consider their bark worse than their bite, because, with the modern system of lookouts and search-lights, and the accuracy and rapidity of the secondary batteries, it is impossible for a torpedo-boat to get within range without exposing itself to instant destruction, and after a torpedo-fleet has once met with a serious repulse, it is believed that it would be almost impossible to get the crews to go into action again.

The torpedo-boat destroyer, contrary to general belief, does not carry any heavy guns, but depends on its great speed and its ability to cripple a torpedo-boat with its 6-pounders while keeping out of range of the enemy's tubes. All torpedo-boat destroyers carry torpedo tubes themselves, so that they can be used against the enemy's battle-s.h.i.+ps or cruisers if the occasion offers. The fastest boat in the United States navy is the destroyer _Bailey_, which can steam thirty-four miles an hour.

In a naval battle the success or failure of a fleet may depend on keeping open communication between the different vessels of the squadron engaged.

Owing to the fact that the surface of the sea would often be obscured by the smoke of battle, the difficulty of this is apparent, and naval experts have been kept busy devising some method by which the flag-s.h.i.+p can communicate with the other vessels of the squadron at all times and under all conditions. So far nothing has been put in general service which meets this demand, but lately there have been experiments with the telephone, which, it is said, can be used without wires, by which signals can be projected by a vibrator on one vessel against a receiver on another. The Navy Department is keeping the details of this new system carefully to itself, as it desires to have the invention for the exclusive use of our own s.h.i.+ps of battle.

The present method of communication is by the use of flags representing numerals which are displayed in the rigging; by the use of the Ardois system of lights for night work; by the Myer code of wigwag signals, and by the use of the heliograph. As it is of the utmost importance that the enemy should not read the message, the signal books on board a vessel are protected with the greatest care, and are destroyed along with the cipher code whenever it is seen that capture is inevitable. The semaph.o.r.e system in use in the British navy was tried for a time aboard some of our vessels, but it never became popular, and has been abandoned.

In signalling by the navy code, the sentence to be sent is looked up in the code-book and its corresponding number is obtained. This number is never more than four figures, on account of the necessity of setting the signal with the least delay. The number having been obtained, the quartermaster in charge of the signal-chest proceeds to bend the flags representing the numerals to the signal halliards, so as to read from the top down. These flags represent the numerals from one to nine and cipher, and there is a triangular pennant termed a repeater, which is used in a combination where one or more numerals recur. The numbers refer to those found in the general signal-book, in which are printed all the words, phrases, and sentences necessary to frame an order, make an inquiry, indicate a geographical position, or signal a compa.s.s course. Answering, interrogatory, preparatory, and geographical pennants form part of this code; also telegraph, danger, despatch, and quarantine flags.